Following 1 year of research involving first-hand interviews with 84 witnesses (including former detainees, guards and officers), Amnesty International has published a 48-page new report titled "Human slaughterhouse: Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya prison, Syria", exposing the “cold-blooded killing of thousands of defenceless prisoners” in Saydnaya military prison near Damascus where an estimated 13,000 people have been hung in the past five years from 2011 to 2015 and where "mass hangings of up to 50 people at a time" had occurred every week, sometimes even "twice a week".

Up to 13,000 people have been secretly hanged in a Syrian jail near Damascus, says Amnesty. Most of those hanged were civilians believed to have been opposed to the Syrian government. Their executions had taken place after one-or-two-minute lawyer-less “trials” using “confessions” extracted through torture. Amnesty considers these practices to be part of a policy of deliberate “extermination”, with massive numbers killed as a result. Also, Amnesty says there are "clear indications" that these mass hanging by the Syrian government are still ongoing till this day, Syria.